Catseye and Angel || Cooking (backdated)

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

Catseye finds Angel pouting in the kitchen, and the two start cooking and start making summer plans. Backdated to the afternoon.



There was. No. Food.

Okay, that wasn't entirely true. In fact, the cabinets were quite stocked with food despite the horde of energy projectors and just plain generally hungry people who had been raiding the kitchen steadily since their return. But Angel, for some reason, didn't want anything in the cabinets. She frowned as she closed the last cabinet, heading to the fridge. She'd been wandering the kitchen rather aimlessly for the last ten minutes, hungry but apparently picky - or maybe she was just looking for something to do.

"Mrrrrrrrt?" Catseye called out, jumping up onto one of the kitchen counters in her catform. She'd been in her catform a lot lately. Mooching it up, she rolled onto her back and put her feet in the air, wanting skritches.

Angel peaked around the open fridge door, giggling when she saw the cat on the counter. "Hey there Catseye," she said with a smile as she changed tracks and went over to the counter, obediently scratching the cat's tummy. "I don't suppose you know where I can find some food?"

Letting the skritches go on for a few moments longer, Catseye reluctantly shifted back to girlform, heels kicking the cabinets as her legs dangled off the counter. "Wanna make something? We could go into the woods and I could get us a deer and you could cook it with your powers! Or a rabbit." She waited a beat before she smirked, letting Angel know it was a joke.

"You know, you had me until the rabbit," Angel informed her friend with a smile. "Because then all I could think was Peter Rabbit and, just, no. I will not eat Peter Rabbit. I'm up for just about anything else, though. Even deer," she added with a wink. "But you're doing that legwork for that one if we do."

"Who's Peter Rabbit?" Catseye inquired, curious. She opened the freezer and pulled out a paper-wrapped package marked 'Sharon's Venison Do Not Touch This Means You Layla Unless You Let Me Help You Cook It.' "We have venison here. Do you know what you want to make with it?"


"He was a rabbit who lived with his mother and sisters and he used to get caught in Mr. McGregor's garden," Angel explained as Catseye went over to the fridge. She tilted her head at the package, thinking. "How about burgers?" She finally asked.

"Burgers! You know me, I'd never say no to burgers!" Catseye laughed. She unwrapped the meat, set it in a ceramic bowl, and pushed it towards Angel. "Can you defrost this for us?" She was still confused about this Peter Rabbit thing. "Is Peter Rabbit a movie? Did I miss it when I was in Tel Aviv?"

Angel took the bowl, heating it up in her hands as she spoke. "It's a children's story," she explained. "By Beatrix Potter. Actually, they made it a movie, too. It's so cute, I bet we could find it online or something once we're done with the burgers. I mean, it's for like, five year olds, but there's nothing saying a couple of perfectly sane adults can't watch it too." She checked the meat quickly. "All set."

Grinning, Catseye cracked an egg into the bowl and added bread crumbs. "Yeah we should definitely watch the movie! And I wonder if anyone here has the book I could read?" The catgirl didn't often regret her life, but sometimes when there was a thing like this, that people like Angel who had had normal childhoods had grown up with, she was painfully aware of what she'd missed. She squelched the meat through her hands a few times, but not too many, since mixing it too much made the burgers tougher. "You want Worcestershire sauce and Dijon in the mix? And onion? Or you want them plain?"

"Maybe the library would have it?" Angel suggested thoughtfully. "I mean, we have like twenty million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I can't imagine Peter Rabbit isn't hiding somewhere in there as well." She considered Catseye's question for a minute. "All of the above. Worcestershire, Dijon, onion. Why not, right?"

"Well, you were living in England," Catseye pointed out, smirking. "I didn't know if maybe with all the bland food there you lost your ability to enjoy things that have some kick to them. Ooo, yeah, maybe! Good idea! I'm so glad you came back from boring old England," she told her friend, still grinning. "You wanna cut up some onion for us?" She washed her hands and grabbed the condiments, as well as a couple spices.

Angel giggled, washing her hands as well before grabbing a knife and a cutting board and set to work on the onions. "Oh it's going to take a lot more than England to break my taste buds," she told Catseye with a grin of her own. The grin turned to a grimace when her eyes started watering. "Gah. Onions."

"Put a silver spoon in your mouth! Quick!" Catseye told her, digging through the cutlery drawer. She didn't really know what silver looked like, so she just grabbed a couple different-looking spoons from a drawer and held one out to Angel at mouth level. "It'll make you stop crying!"


Silver spoon? Angel had never heard that one before. She took the spoon in her mouth, twisting so she could dry her eyes on the shoulder of her shirt. "Where did you learn this trick?" She tried to ask, but it came out as something more akin to, "Wha da oo un dith tra?"

It took Catseye a few moments to work out what Angel was saying, but she giggled when she did. "Cooking school! Well, okay, actually that one was Veronica Mars, but I've learned a lot from school, too. I couldn't decide if I wanted to go into political science or become a chef. I'm glad I decided to be a chef!"

Angel finished the onions, grinning as she took the spoon out of her mouth. "I guess it's true what they say about all important lessons being learned on television," she said with a laugh of her own. "For the record, I'm glad you decided to be a chef too, but I might be a little biased because, you know, love food and what not. What next?"


"Can you put the onions in the mix?" the catgirl asked, while she turned back to mix the condiments and spices in with the beef. "Everyone loves food," she nodded, "that's one of the reasons I wanted to become a chef. I also had this feeling that people wouldn't need rescuing as often if I was a chef as if I kept working at Elpis," she chuckled. "I mean, people still need rescuing when I'm an X-Man, but with cooking I have that nice safe thing to look forward to every day, it's not like being an X-Man's my... job." But suddenly when she said it, it didn't sound quite right. "Is being an X-Man supposed to be a job?"

A slight frown creased Angel's lips as she considered the question. "I've always thought a job implied getting paid?" She said finally, her uncertainty making the words a question. "Unless the professor has been giving us paychecks I don't know about." She slid the onions into the mix, still considering this. "But I mean...I don't know. I think it's more like volunteer work, maybe? Very, very extreme volunteer work."


"Very extreme volunteer work! I like that!" Catseye laughed, giving the meat mixture another couple squishes and beginning to form the burgers with handfuls of it. "That makes me feel a lot better, you have no idea. I was... worried, that I wasn't thinking the right thing about being an X-Man. So I'm glad you feel the same way."

Angel took some of the meat mixture in her hands and began squishing it into a burger shape as well. "I wonder if anyone actually knows going in if this is for them," she said after a moment. "I mean, we all sign up for it, but I know when I talked to Mr. Summers I had no clue if this was actually going to work out. Can't go wrong if you want to save lives though, right?"


Catseye hesitated, face screwing up as she thought. "I dunno. There are lots of ways to save lives, I mean we could become doctors or firemen or paramedics if we wanted to save lives, yes? But," she amended with a shrug, "like you said, you never know going into something how it's going to be." She got a plate to put the formed burgers on. "And I'm still glad I left Elpis and came back here to train as an X-Man, don't get me wrong. Being a secretary was... reallyreallyreally not what I wanted. I dunno," she sighed, "maybe what I'm feeling is that I'm a burger that's getting into the shape of a burger, but I'm still not barbecued yet?" She still didn't feel like her life was where it was supposed to be, like there was still something missing, something she hadn't realized until she'd been on this Genosha mission and had gotten a refresher about what an X-Man actually was.

Angel was quiet for a moment as she set the burger she'd formed onto the plate and took another handful of meat. "Then I guess you just have to keep trying?" She suggested after a moment. "You know, all that stuff they say about forming your own destiny and what not, it's true. Or I believe it is, at least. You tried Elpis and and it didn't quite work, now you're trying being an X-Man and maybe that'll work out better or maybe you'll move on and find something that really fits, right? For the record, though," she added with a grin, "I'm really happy you came back, too."


"We're both back and now that we are, we're gonna have sososo much fun together this summer!" the catgirl exclaimed eagerly. When all the burgers were formed, she carried them out to the patio. "Do you wanna go to the firepit and use your powers to cook the burgers, or you want me to use the barbecue? Also, we should go on a roadtrip somewhere this summer or something. Do you have any plans this summer?"

"Hmn...." Angel considered the burger question for a long moment. "Let's do the firepit. I'll get the wood." She bounced off to collect the wood, smiling. "And I started summer classes this week to make up for the stuff I didn't finish in England, but I'm free as bird for the last half of July and August and yes, yes, YES, road trip please! Let's do it!"


"Exxxxcellent! Where should we go?! What do we wanna see?! Oooo, should we go up to the Northwest like to Seattle and we can see the aquarium there and you can take lots of pictures in the woods and maybe we'll meet a Sasquatch! Or we could go to Canada and look for the Ogopogo!" For some reason all of a sudden she really wanted to look for mythical creatures! "Or we could just go hang out at the beach somewhere, like California or Florida or New Mexico." Catseye wasn't picky. "Should we ask other people to come with us or you just wanna go by ourselves?!"

"Oooooh, mythical creature hunting." Angel's eyes lit up at the prospect. "That would be AWESOME, we should totally do that. I bet I could get Sasquatch to pose for me!" She giggled a bit as she threw the wood she'd found into the firepit, save for one stick which she set on fire before letting it join its friends. "I can't see anyone really being down with chasing mythical creatures across America with us, so that might be a you-and-me adventure. But on the other hand if we're gonna go beach hopping, I think we're obligated by some kind of friend's code to invite others because, I mean, it's the beach and the more the merrier."


"Yeah, that's true," Catseye laughed. "Okay, I like this plan! Either plan, I mean. Creature hunting or the beach. Or maybe we could do both! We could have some of the time to ourselves and then meet up with the others!"

"The best of both worlds," Angel said with a grin. "I like it. Oh man, this is going to be great! We can spend a couple weeks traipsing across America then call people and be like 'Hey, meet us in Florida.' Or, you know, anywhere with a beach."


"Anywhere with a beach sounds like heaven to me!" Catseye beamed. "So long as there's sun and burgers and friends, of course!"